LIV Golf Seeks New Investors, Brooks Running CEO Dan Sheridan

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1:45Policies provided by Hartford Fire Insurance Company and its property and casualty affiliates, Hartford, Connecticut. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Some interesting stuff going on behind the scenes over at Live Golf. Do you know about this?

2:26Yes. I think this is a super interesting development because when it first came out, everybody was like, oh my gosh, and the people that were lining up with it. Not only was it, oh my gosh, but it was, oh my gosh, this money is endless. Okay, so the future of Live Golf is in doubt. The Breakaway League hunting for new investors after Saudi Arabia ended its ongoing financial support for the loss-making league that briefly challenged the PGA Tours supremacy. We've got a great voice on this. Randall Williams is Bloomberg News, U.S. sports business reporter. He joins us from Miami. Randall, always good to have you on the program.

2:58Always a treat to get to talk to you, especially when you're in Miami. Although I like it more when you're here with us and maybe we could all go to Miami together. Wait, where are you? He's at the Miami Bloomberg House, right? I'm in Miami. I'm sitting in the paddock and they keep turning up the music. I thought they were going to get quieter, but I'm happy to be here and happy to talk all things Love Golf. You sound good, so don't worry about it. You sound good. Okay, great. When Live Golf first was announced a few years ago, I want to go back to this idea that it seemed like this was funded by an unlimited pot of money, and they were handing out these huge purses to attract players.

3:36What happened? Well, I think for a long period of time, when you're paying players hundreds of millions of dollars, you're paying these golf courses hundreds of millions of dollars. And then, of course, that's not including your employees, your workforce, all of those things. It's going to throw a lot of money at it. And you want to see profit at the end of the day. And LIV was just starting. And I think with all the things going on in the world, with the war, with other things like oil and things like that, the Saudi Public Investment Fund looked at this and they were like, I don't know if we need to do this anymore.

4:08And so LIV Golf, if you ask people around there, they'll tell you that they're still charging forward. They just need to find new investors. How much do they need? That is the multi-million dollar question. I think your guess is as good as mine. Listen, LiveGolf spent$5 billion over the course of, I want to say, three to five years. They're not going to get another$5 billion, but the hope is that they can get something from maybe private equity, maybe another sovereign wealth fund, get across the finish line of whatever the finish line that can keep things going. Can they keep it going based on what you're seeing?

4:45I mean, is there demand for it? Do people want it? Do players want to be involved in it? I've had a lot of conversations. And what my sources tell me is that live golfers have legitimate conversations with investors, but my sources won't tell me who those conversations are. So it's a little difficult to tell. Could this be an Aries and Apollo or anything like that? And I'm just throwing those names out there because they have a lot of money. They're not involved in the conversation as far as I know. But if you're not willing to go on record, and saying the people you're talking to, it's very difficult to categorize and to legitimize.

5:20Who are you talking to and who is going to fund this thing that is already a door of$5 billion? I think what's interesting too is the Saudis are going to still have 95 % ownership. This is according to your reporting, but they just don't have the funding to continue into a new season. So they're still committed, but they're the ones can make or break it right now, essentially. The analogy that I would use to describe this is like, when you're riding a bike and someone's sort of pushing me, right? And you're on these training wheels and then they let go. Well, the Saudis are pushing this for five years.

5:58We spent a lot of money, a lot of turbo pushing this bike. Well, now they've let go. And we're going to find out if Liv Golf can ride without the training wheels and continue to pedal and pedal and pedals. That's the best analogy I can give it. I like that analogy. It works for this. and I'm trying to think of a way where I can't torture it, so I'm going to leave it as is. But what is it, you know, if we think about the history here, a few years ago, there was going to be a merger between the PGA and Live Golf. Feels like a mulligan. There we go. Carol did it. What that, is that back, could that be back on the table?

6:38Listen, I won't be the first person to say this, but I think that Live Golf and PGA Tour Mergers is effectively good. PGA Tour did a lot of things to try to evolve. They have$1.5 billion invested in it from PGA Tour Enterprises. That is a$3 billion package total. There's another$1.5 billion that they can get. On top of that, they have new leadership. Former NFL executive Brian Rollap is hearing the shit now. He's doing a lot. The players are excited. So with all of those things, I just can't imagine a world where the PGA Tour comes back into this and they're like, you know what? We're willing to save this because even before Roll App arrived, the BGH store was very antagonistic towards the end of golf.

7:19They're still the exact same way, but they're damn sure not as friendly. So is it is it just because people aren't interested in it? I mean, they don't have really great TV viewership. I mean, if they had a TV contract, right, media rights. We talk about that with so many other sports that brings so much money in. Is that the reason that it's just having such a hard time? I think that any original IP in anything that we do for us all business entities is going to struggle when people don't know you. Like, it sounds good. If the NBA, LeBron and Steph Curry and Victor Wambanyama left tomorrow to start a European league or something along those lines, I think there would be interest.

8:03But is that going to topple 75, 80 years of history for the NBA? Probably not. The league is going to keep going because there's 80 years of recognition. And I think Lille's had a lot going and had a lot of momentum. But evidently, their events are overseas. And they have a couple here in the States and here in North America. But again, you need really, really special moments. You need your players to then go to the Masters and the Majors and win. And that hasn't exactly happened yet. So I think for U.S. consumers and U.S. watchers, they were waiting for a moment to be like, let's buy into this.

8:36And I'm not sure it ever feels bigger, though, Tim. Yeah, it does feel bigger. I remember watching the Miami. You're in Miami right now. I remember watching the Miami Open. I think it was this year. And there were I was watching on TV. There were logos during of the Saudi private investment fund or public investment fund. Excuse me, the PIF. And it showed that. And it wasn't I don't know what they were advertising, but it obviously showed a line with a presence with the tournament. But I wonder what it means for Saudi Arabia and the way that Saudi Arabia has invested in sports because they haven't stopped investing.

9:14I mean, they're still buying these, the gaming companies they own are still buying, you know, spending billions of dollars. What does it mean for how they're thinking about sports? I mean, if you think about the start of this conversation, what it was three years ago when I just started at Bloomberg, it was the Saudi Arabia sports watching. Yeah. They're going to do this. They're going to get in. And granted, they got into boxing. and I don't know if infiltrate the right word, but they have absolutely influenced the boxing and the combat sports world. I don't know if that existed in the same way across all sports.

9:44Like in the NFL, sovereign wealth isn't allowed. The NBA has soft sovereign wealth and the MLB has, I'm not familiar with the MLB, but it isn't the exact same way. And so with them departing the golf world, you have to wonder what is the next sport that they will choose if they choose a sport at all. Stay with us. This more from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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11:50Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Or watch us live on YouTube. Just a reminder, everybody. Charlie, don't forget. Mark your calendars, kids. We're just a bit over a week for Mother's Day. We moms actually do care about this. They do. Get on it if you haven't already. Mother's Day is one of, if not, the biggest sales periods for flowers here in the U.S. Yeah. I just got flowers for my birthday. It's so much fun. Happy birthday. Thank you. It was yesterday and Wednesday, I heard. Yeah, it's getting extended. Great to have back with us. as always, Christina Stemble, founder and CEO of Farm Girl Flowers.

12:30It's a firm that she has built from the ground up. We have enjoyed talking with her over the years as her business changes, evolves, deals with different cycles. She has bootstrapped it since starting it back in 2010, making bouquets from her San Francisco apartment. Such a great story. How are you? Great to have you back. You're in Gig Harbor? Yes, I'm in Washington right now. I'm getting ready to fly out. All of us are scattering around the United States for next week. But happy to be here. Thanks for having me back. What's it like a week out? Like we've often talked to you right up against the day and it's crazy.

13:04But tell us about like at this point, like what are you doing? Yeah, this is actually I think the most stressful week is the week before the biggest week of the year for us. Everybody is anxiety and nervous and, you know, you're biting your fingernails and hoping the sales are going to come in like you've planned for months and months and months. and just getting, you know, it's the wait before the storm where you just want to be in it and doing it. And how's it looking? It's looking good. It's a little slower than previous years. You know, we found this this year. I mean, it's a hard year, right?

13:39And flowers are not a necessity, even though we think they are for mom. So, I mean, you know, we're happy, but we're cautiously optimistic, I should say. They're coming in a little bit slower than we were hoping, but we're confident that next week, you know, we just hit May. People don't really think about it until you hit May for Mother's Day. Would you look at the charts? And I know you guys are so data-driven, Christina. Would you look at the charts from previous years? Sort of where does this year compare to with what you're selling? Yeah. I mean, this year in general has been, you know, for the last couple of years, it's been tough.

14:13You know, we've talked a lot. And, you know, we're coming in where we thought we would, which is about the same as last year. You know, we're always trying to do better than the year before. But this year, I think given how tough everything is, we're hoping for just a tiny bit of lift and we'll be happy with that. Yes. Like me though, I'm off in a last minute kind of gal. So I know how people are scrambling. What's your cost side looking like? I mean, we've talked about this with you. You've really given us a great education about flour growing and the importance of those global supply chains, but give us an idea of kind of where we are.

14:47We're talking about tariffs again, courtesy of the president who made some comments earlier. Yeah. I mean, it's challenging to talk about tariffs at the same time we're talking about like huge fuel surcharges with the war. You know, it's like you can kind of take one at a time, but when you put them all together, it gets very, very challenging very quickly. fuel is the biggest, you know, top of mind right now. And also like as the fuel prices will hopefully come down, you know, fingers crossed in the coming months, we won't see it as quickly as we'd like because the major carriers have implemented, you know, broader bands, pay bands.

15:24So, you know, we're all going into, you know, slower months of the summer months coming up and, you know, in gifting in general. And so, you know, hitting those or getting, you know, those, those band differences in prices will take a lot longer than we were anticipating. So, and our costs are up. We're up 5 % of revenue is up in fuel alone. So it's hard right now. What adjustments are you making on the price side as a result of that? Yeah, we had to raise prices like everyone. We're absorbing as much as we can. We absorb about half of it and then we pass the other half on because we have to, you know, we need to still make a little tiny bit of, you know, the margins are so tiny and perishable product like flowers anyway.

16:07So it's just huge risk with very little rewards. And anytime you add something like, you know, a war that's going to, you know, impact everything, let's be honest, but especially fuel. And we need fuel for everything coming in. It's not just, you know, everybody thinks about, you know, the outbound, you know, the box going to the consumer, but fertilizers and, you know, the bulbs and the seeds and everything that comes in. Also, there's a transportation cost with that as well. So it just adds up very quickly. Yeah. And when it's, like you say, when it's perishable, it's not like you can stockpile when there's a sale on flowers and put them in the warehouse.

16:42Christina, talk to us about, because there's labor involved too. You have a team and we've often talked about it. Do you have all the workers you need? How's that going? Because we obviously look at the employment area and I'm curious to see what you are seeing firsthand. Yeah. I mean, we actually have some open positions. um it we're you know it's it's we're looking for really good people farm girls a little bit different though we work a little bit different we're a bootstrap company as you mentioned and so everybody has to wear a lot of hats and people have to be willing to do that and so you know finding you know team members that want to work in that type of environment is different than it was before covid it definitely has shifted i think in the last five years um so we have if you're listening and you want to work hard we do have some open positions that we're looking for right now.

17:27How is the, the, your own flower growing going right now? It's something that we've talked with you about in the past and you've, you've, you're different in that you're trying to do some of this yourself versus importing. What's the status of that right now? Yeah, we're still doing it. We're building our farm quarters right here where I'm sitting right now. There's some planting going on outside right now as we speak. So we're excited about that. Some vertical integration, But, you know, it's also a little bit more than that for us. We wanted to learn every area of our business. And so that's been really fun.

18:02I don't know if it's going to be the, you know, we'll see how it turns out. You know, we did some, I think, certain crops that we're doing at more of a scale, like peonies. We put in, you know, many, many thousands of plants a couple of years ago. We haven't had our first harvest yet. So we're looking forward to that first harvest. We have a lot of money tied up that we're waiting to hopefully see back in the coming years. Got to say, peonies are my absolute favorite flowers. And that's what people want, right? In terms of like, what's trending? Yeah. We polled our customers a couple of years ago and it continues to be the same response.

18:33So you are not alone, Carol. They're also one of my favorites as well, but 92 % of our customers, peonies were their favorite flowers. So when you're in doubt, if you don't know what to get, get some peonies. They're the ones that are behind me right now. They're beautiful. They're floofy. They remind you of things like your grandmother's garden or your backyard that you grew up in. And everybody I talked to just loves peony. So that's kind of a tried and true if you don't know what to get. You know, you went right there. It was my grandmother's garden. It was like unbelievable. And she could take a stem and root it.

19:02Like she was just unbelievable as a gardener. Like she was just crazy. What else? Are people, like, are they trading down then a little bit, like smaller bouquets in terms of gifting? Or like, I'm just curious about that as well. Yeah. I think it's kind of following what everybody, Every industry that I research is kind of in the same place with the K-shaped economy people talk about. There's some stats read this morning that 20 % of consumers are buying 60 % of all the goods out there right now. That's not different than it's been a lot of times, but I think we're seeing it more and more. People are struggling to pay for gas and groceries right now.

19:43They're not going to spend a lot of money on flowers. You know, we're really excited about we have a Safeway line as well. So we're trying to be able to reach consumers that might not be able to afford something from our site right now. So we're in over 200 Safeway stores. So you can go there and for about the price of shipping, pick up a bouquet there. And then on our site, we're trying our best to accommodate as many people as we can. So we have some options that are, you know, in the 50s and$60 ranges. And then we have some that go up to like$150,$200. So, you know, people are, you know, some people are gravitating towards$150 and a lot of people are going towards the 50 to$75.

20:18And then some people are going to Safeway. So we're trying to like meet them where they are. So if you, if you meet them where you are, how do you do that in a way that's still profitable and still offer something that, that can compete with a price point that they might find somewhere else, but still allows you to serve them? In other words, do you have the products and the margins to be able to offer a lower price point? Yeah. I mean, that's been something we struggled with for the whole 15 years that I've been in business. Being bootstrapped, we've never had$100 million of venture capital behind us.

20:52So we had a lot of people in our industry that were just offering huge discounts and free shipping and all these things because they didn't have to be profitable. The good thing about where the economy is right now from a business standpoint, from a bootstrap business standpoint, I should say, is it's a little bit more of a level playing field. You know, people still think of us as the most expensive option out there. But if you go look at, you know, our competitor sites, they are very similar, if not more expensive than us now, because even though they have all that venture capital, you know, or they have had that, you know, the, you know, most, most private equity and venture capital firms are expecting their investments to be profitable now.

21:27And we've always had to be profitable. So, you know, it's a little bit more of an even playing field. So I'm looking for all the, I'll take that as a win right now because there's not a whole lot of wins. So, you know, we've always had to make sure there's a little bit of profit at the, you know, at the very bottom line. It's in single digits, but it's there. And so we're able to do that a little bit more effectively sometimes than others. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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23:04You become what you spend on, and that's not what you're building toward. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that eliminates that work before it starts. AI agents that handle the manual stuff automatically, so your team can spend their time on what actually compounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Or watch us live on YouTube. Well, speaking of advanced technology, Carol. Speaking of AI.

23:43You've heard of Lifespan. Have you seen my LinkedIn photo? Your AI generator. No, it's not true. It's real. Have you heard of the Lifespan, right? Everyone, you know what Lifespan is. Get it. Totally get it. Everyone is talking about health span, the years that, you know, you can age gracefully and sort of feel better at a late age. Now, apparently, we're all extending our quote, hot span. Staying hot. I guess. I guess. What is a hot span? What is hot span? Why don't we let my fellow geriatric millennial, Chris Rauser, tell us all about it. What a welcome, guys. Hi, Chris. Hi. Great to be here.